Waffling harder than a brunch buffet – why Elon Musk can’t stop contradicting himself

Elon Musk picks fights, deletes posts, and moves markets – all before lunch. His latest feud with Trump shows just how risky his regret cycle has become.

Elon Musk’s public fallout with Donald Trump made the rounds last week. While it wasn't necessarily surprising that it happened, this week, we’ve got a burst of regret from Elon.

Backtracking is nothing new in his personality, especially when it comes to government contracts and Tesla’s stock value.

As the media pitches it as a red-blue-corner-style bout, the strategic context of personal wealth and the future of SpaceX’s strategic role continues to make waves in the background.

I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.

undefined Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2025

The flip-flop files

When Musk bought Twitter in 2022, He claimed he was pro-free speech, but then banned journalists who merely covered the takeover. Talk about doing a 180.

Back in the days of COVID, he made out that the coronavirus panic was dumb, and later tweeted about the number of cases, like a concerned citizen.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left in 2018 “due to ideological differences.” In 2023, he forecast humanities' destruction by AI, and in February this year, he launched the chatbot Grok-3 to compete.

Everyone respects agility, but outright mental whiplash causes a frenzy.

Maybe chameleonic tendencies can be part of a broader strategy – like Trump with the Russia-Ukraine negotiations, for example.

The Musk effect

With Starlink and Ukraine, Musk showed his tendency to change his views after initially offering Starlink internet service to Ukraine to help repel the Russian attack, before later threatening to cut it off over costs and war concerns.

Musk's posts can often send stock prices tanking or boosting, especially when it comes to Tesla – the price dropping in the Trump feud – or with the crypto Dogecoin, soaring with the setting up of the DOGE department.

The DOGE department was set up with a startup appeal, but if it unravels – it could become one of the biggest political crash and burn stories.

Backpedalling on his row with Trump may be fine for now, but the risks of the regret cycle – provoke, delete, regret – are becoming so routine that Musk may not have any credibility left to lose.